Vegas will pop up SonicFoundry's VidCap program to capture the video. This program often works well with most capture devices but is rather limited in the codec choices available. It's fine if you're intending to capture uncompressed AVI from an analog device or DV AVI from a firewire device. Both of these are excellent formats, but DV requires about 225MB/minute and uncompressed can be over 1.7GB/minute. If your capture device comes with it's own capture software you may want to see what sorts of compression it offers. Stay away from MPEG while capturing though as it's a real headache to work with MPEG source files.

I would suggest using MPEG-1 for the finished files on the CD. If you use a bitrate of 3Mb/s or higher you can deliver full 640x480 resolution files that look nearly as good as the original video. MPEG-1 is also nearly universal and can be played in almost any media player on almost any computer. Since the primary viewing destination is computer screens, you'll probably want to tweak the custom render settings slightly to change the frame size to 640x480 and pixel aspect ratio to 1.000 since computer screens use square pixels. The default 720x480 frame size and aspect ratio are intended for playback on televisions and will produce a "short and fat" image on a computer screen.

YUY2 does not seem available to me. Is it part of standard Vegas, or installed with capture card driver (AverMedia EZCapture). Using composite video. Can I get this separately ? What about plain old 'Microsoft Video'.

It does do (snip):
- AVI Compatible
- Supports YUV 4:2:2,YUV 4:1:1 and RGB 32,24,15 Formats
- Composite and S-Video Inputs
- Full Screen Resolution Capture
(up to 640x480 for NTSC, 768x576 for PAL)


The project is TV ads to be put onto data CDs for discussion. in marketing
'brain'-storming sessions, so doesn't need to be primo quality...

geoff

I would try either the YUV 4:2:2 or the RGB24 formats. The first one will probably be somewhere around 600MB/minute (i'm totally guessing), and the RGB24 format is most likely uncompressed at 1.5GB/minute. Since you're dealing with ads i would guess that the length of your material is probably short, 30 seconds or so, so i wouldn't worry about file size. Just get it captured and then use Vegas to change the format if you wish.

If you want to save versions for later editing without eating up tons of space, i would recommend rendering to DV AVI after capturing and then delete the original capture file. This format lets you fit a little over 3 minutes on a 700MB CD-R. It's also Vegas' native format so you won't lose anything by saving to this format and reopening later.

I've made a few 3MB/s MPEG-1 videos on CD-R recently for some folks and it was difficult to see any compression artifacts at all. The videos played back well in Windows MediaPlayer, on Macs, and on most of the DVD players we tried as well. At this rate you can probably fit 30 minutes on a CD-R. You can use a higher bitrate for better quality if you wish, but depending on the speed of the playback drive it may start getting choppy if the drive can't keep up with the bitrate. MPEG-1 at 8MB/s looks about as good as a DVD, but i wouldn't be able to play the file directly from the CD; i'd have to copy it to my hard drive first.

Not a lot of info at first glance at the Avermedia site, though quite a few hits searching on AverMedia EZCapture with google - might want to check out other users comments on what's best for/with that card.

Possibly the easiest way for you to accomplish what you want is to capture directly into either the Microsoft Windows Media 9 Encoder or the Real Helix Producer (both available free). Utilities let you cut the endpoints etc., but otherwise editing is alas limited today.

Otherwise, RGB capture sucks! Sorry, no polite way around that one, but Windows itself is not very friendly to analog RGB capture, and you'll be severely limited in your options - avoid if at all possible.

Likewise the capture utility SOFO provides. Great for DV, poor for analog, assuming you can get it to work. Virtual Dub will work well, AVI-IO might do it, and there are lots of pvr alternatives - might want to search this forum for prior posts, tips by other users. Capturing uncompressed (which is your usual choice using SOFO vidcap for analog) does not work well, offers little if any advantage, and does nothing to maintain audio sync.

Looking for an analog capture app, you'll have a choice between capturing mjpg or mpg2. For the first, use HUFFYUV (preferred) followed by Picvideo and Morgan. Mpg2 capture, contrary to urban legend based on early efforts, can work extremely well - ATI couldn't sell tons of their AIW cards otherwise. If doing mpg2, capture all I frame at the highest cbr possible. According to info at adamwilt.com, mpg2 is pretty equivalent to DV at the same bit rates, and you'll find it used by pros at all levels.

Some folks will persistently tell you that mpg2 is not editable. Like many compression formats, it doesn't store complete frames, so an NLE (any NLE) has to generate most of the frames making up the video for you to edit it. This is problematic in practice, but *Easily* avoided using DVD2AVI & VFAPI (see posts here, doom9.org, dvdrhelp.com, digital-digest.com). Search this forum and you'll find posts from others using this method.

For delivery, mpg1 is suitable for VCDs on a VCD player and *little else*. I mean, sure a model t might still drive, but would you rather use it or a Porsche for your daily commute? For PC only viewing, probably real or winmedia 9, though you should look at DiVX, mpg4, Xvid, quicktime etc., see which is more likely to be supported on your viewing hardware. Real Video 9 might be the quickest to encode.

The suggested bitrate of 3 M is only good for showing just how poor mpg1 encoding works & looks! SVCD bitrates below 2.4 M get very near DVD quality using mpg2 (check dvdrhelp.com for tips). If quality is important, Winmedia 9 &/or Real Video 9 and similar will do quite well at 1.8 M, with decent quality still possible at 1.1 M, and acceptable viewing at ~ 800 K - it's done all the time. Don't get bitrate crazy - a PC will have to read the data fast enough to play it. Generally you should fit an hour on a CD, an hour and 15 minutes if the source allows, with any of the streaming formats and still get very nice video. Using mpg2 SVCDs, the limit is closer to an hour.

Try also to not be confused with all this aspect ratio BS. The AverMedia EZCapture does 640 square pixel capture as you've written, so you should be able to avoid all hassles regarding that stuff. The easiest way to do it for your purposes is capture 320 x 240, this will probably work well with your card, and avoids more complex issues like field order. The PC graphics card will easily double the size on playback, or go full screen.

If you do import a 640 x 480 clip into Vegas, make sure the clip properties show the correct fps, the correct aspect of 1, and the correct field order (the only real reason to check as Vegas should get the other two right automatically). Then in your project properties, click the icon to use the setting from your file, recheck the field order & audio and you're good to go. When rendering you'll want to use the templates as a starting point only - save your own - and in the custom dialog make sure everything matches your proj settings.